Good evening...it is 10:00 on a rainy Tuesday night in Charleston WV...but the motel has the Internet..and I have wanted to get my two cents in here on this topic...
It seems thast every so often some guitar magazine prints up a list of
"The 100 Most Influential Guitarists Of All Time" or something of that ilk. And the response among those who peruse these lists is usually along the lines of; "Hey....why isn't So-and-So on the list" or "How can they rate Rucka Rucka as being "greater" than Humma Humma?" There was a recent thread here in which the debate raged as to whether Jimi Hendrix was "greater" than Ritchie Blackmore or vice versa....
Let's set aside all the talk about chops and scales and fretboard gymnastics and define what makes a guitarist "great". Is it the speed with which he plays or the number of hotel rooms he may have wrecked? I think not....And how are these rankings determined? What philosophical slide rule are we using to make these calculations? Saying that one guitarist is "better" than another is like saying that the invention of penicillin was a greater contribution to the human condition than the invention of the wheel.
From where I am sitting, I think that what is the true mark of a "Great Guitarist" is the influence he or she has on those who follow in their wake. Probably the greatest gift Jimi Hendrix gave to players was his tone and revolutionary use of effects. Other players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion but Jimi took these ideas, infused them with his infinite imagination and changed the vocabulary for rock guitar overnight. You recognize that when a peer of his like Neil Young once said something to the effect of "JImi wasn't even in the same building with the rest of us.."
Now flash forward to 1977...you buy an album by an unknown band called
Van Halen and you listen to "
Eruption" for the first time..and your jaw hit the floor as you shake your head and wonder..."
How the hell did he just do that?" Eddie Van Halen said that his biggest influence was Eric Clapton...but you don't hear EC when you hear Eddie play.....you hear a young man who listened to his influences, assimilated them, injected his own personality and created something of his very own.
And lastly..anyone who has the heart and desire to learn to play an instrument and has the stones to get up in front of a crowd and play his heart out will ALWAYS be Number One in my book!
Soul Mover- Hendrix?
Hendrix influences
Mr. Marsh
you can listen to a sampler from the record by visiting 
www.glennhughes.com
Linear Mode
